jchendy
I didn't do it alone of course (probably a dozen people have worked on the UI, and hundreds on the backend), but it was my main project for around 9 months. Lots of videos that people care a lot about go through there.
If you're crossing any bridges or tunnels, a 15 minute train ride could easily be 45 minutes in a shuttle or car.
Is this a good thing? It feels like saying "It's English without the periods or line breaks or capital letters."
That's director-level compensation. Would somebody whose only experience is 4-5 years of running a startup be hired straight into a director role?
Why do you consider that strange?
The article might have already discussed this, but I can't tell because of the paywall.
With rent as a multiplier, it's like they're suggesting 100% of your income goes to rent. It seems like a more reasonable way to take housing into account would be something like:
Salary = Base + Avg Rent
Using that formula, salary might be about $20k more for somebody in NYC than for somebody in Tucson. Using the actual calculator, it's $72k more ($117k vs $45k for senior level and average experience).
I'm a little torn on #1. I definitely don't think anybody should be allowed to be paid less than minimum wage. But on the other hand, if these people are choosing to come to the United States to work these jobs because it's better than what they could get in their home country, it's hard for me to say they shouldn't be able to do it.
Isn't #2 the whole point of sanctuary cities? In theory, the undocumented immigrants in these cities should have no fear of going to police and other authorities. Whereas in other cities the police might actually be obligated to inform immigration officials.
#3 is interesting. Definitely undocumented immigrants make use of government resources, but they also help the economy by providing cheap labor. As far as I know, there isn't a strong consensus on whether the overall impact is positive or negative. For example, here's a brief article that explores both sides a bit: http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-thorny-economics-of-illegal-...
I believe you that this is the requirement for some fields of engineering. However, there are thousands of people reading HN with the job title 'software engineer' who did not take those exams.
California is actually one of the lowest (42nd). The irony is that states where people vote for small government and lower taxes tend to receive a larger share per capita of federal money.
In some countries it is that way. I know Canada is very strict about who can be called an engineer.
In the US, it is not that way. AFAIK, there's no legal definition of an engineer, and anybody can call themselves an engineer.
Why would they? Are you imagining somebody who only wants to be part of a team that's overworked?
How can you say that after reading the first question in the article? Do you think the editor was just cherry picking the most extreme anecdotes they could find?
A lot of it also goes to essential business expenses: HR, legal, the AWS bill, the new feature that's currently losing money but will pay off in the long term.
And the person who made the $1.5mm code fix didn't do it on their own. They wouldn't have been able to improve the code if somebody else hadn't already written the first version. And neither of them would have been able to get their code into production if somebody hadn't set up the build and release process for the company. And they never would have been in the position to make the $1.5mm fix if their manager hadn't identified the need for an additional engineer on the team and recruited them. And the company wouldn't exist if the founder hadn't had the idea in the first place. And the company would have blown up last year if the lawyers hadn't made sure the company was protected from a frivolous lawsuit. Et cetera, et cetera.
Luckily I've never experienced an atmosphere like that.
Yeah, that's what I suspected. To me, that line of thinking feels short-sighted and/or motivated by revenge rather than rationality.
There's a tendency for people to think that HR software and other internal tools are less important than public products, but if the company is allocating employees properly, that doesn't really make sense.
The engineers working on this HR software all passed the same technical interviews that everybody else did. Amazon could have easily allocated them to some flashy consumer product, but management decided that it's important to have a team working on HR software. So either somebody made a horrible miscalculation when they decided to build the HR software, or this work is equally valuable to all the other work happening.
I've found that this is a much less stressful and more productive way to approach most things in life.
> Some of the 60 hr/week employees are gunning for promotions and probably don't care about work life balance. Why should everyone have to compete with that?
That seems totally reasonable. It's similar to the way tech companies have a concept of a "terminal level" where it's considered fine to spend your whole career with no pressure or expectations to earn further promotions.
Though as others have suggested, a 3 month vacation every year might be an even better approach to a 75% work schedule.
I think that's true of every tech successful company. There's always more +EV work to be done than people to do it, and recruiting quality people is never easy.
It seems short-sighted to suggest that the existence of this problem necessitates working long hours. There are lots of factors to consider:
* It's possible that somebody working 30 hours is actually more productive than somebody working 40 hours, so productivity goes up under the new policy without hiring anybody new.
* It's possible that many more people could enter the workforce if a 30 hour week with a flexible schedule was possible. This working style could be appealing to students, retired people, stay-at-home parents, artists, etc.
* Maybe it's actually okay for productivity to go down. If the company is able to remain stable while getting slightly less done and having much happier employees, perhaps that's a net gain to society.
Do you have evidence that prison actually reduces future crimes?
The things I'd like to happen are: 1) Reduce the liklihood that these people will commit further crimes 2) Discourage other people from robbing homes 3) Help you replace the things you lost
I'm not really familiar with the literature on this, but I'd guess there are more effective options than prison for all three of those.